My guest is Rusty Speidel, a Social Media and Interactive Executive, Musician, Bike Racer, Entrepreneur. He is the VP Social Media at Rowdy.com. Along with two founding partners, Rusty created the Rowdy brand, helped set the editorial tone, designed online and offline offerings, and managed all creative production efforts. The site grew from 1,500 members to over 20,000 members/1.5 million page views per month in 18 months.

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The Rowdy community grew 1,000% in one year through the creative use of social media strategies, Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing, Split (A/B) testing, social engagement metrics, and detailed traffic analysis.

Rusty helped to develop a content distribution strategy that has resulted in substantial partnerships with Yahoo!, CMT/MTV,sporting news, NASCAR scene and major race tracks.

Furthermore, he initially produced Rowdy.com’s award-winning NASCAR podcast, which is the #1-rated NASCAR podcast on iTunes and has 60,000 downloads per month.

Let’s jump into the interview:

Q. Do you have any tips to assure that a product or service is well-received in the traditional marketplace?

A. Think it through first! Make sure there is a need for the product with an identifiable demographic and that your proposed solution is researched, tested, and most of all, that your target audience has participated in that research. So many times, businesses fail because those folks launching it are basing decision on what they would do or want or spend, not on actual market reality.

Q. Do you have any suggestions for helping to enhance a company’s reputation on line?

A. Yes . . .

1. Listen to what your customers are saying about you before you do anything;
2. Share valuable information without expectation of reward;
3. Be honest and open;
4. Treat customers as people;
5. Accept invitations to connect and then CONNECT!
6. If you write a blog, invite comments and respond;
7. Solve problems without marketing.

Q. Do you see a difference between enhancing a large company’s reputation and a small or mid-size company?

A. In theory, not really. Transparency, honesty, and responsiveness in business SHOULD be part of a company’s philosophy no matter what. That said, I would agree that larger companies have more challenges because their size has locked them in to certain legal and corporate parameters. While it might be great, it’s not straightforward to have anyone from GM or Ford just saying whatever they want about the company online. The main point here is that no matter who you are, you need to listen first and develop a response strategy that fits your issues and your size.

Q. You’ve worked with developing teams of designers, writers, developers, and editors. What advice do you have for developing these teams? Do you use on-line resources, or do you identify team members first?

A. I am a collaborative manager. I have absolutely no doubt that there are many creative and technical people that are far more capable than me. The first thing I do is try and find them and bring them together. To get the most out of them, I set a clear direction, with enough detail so they can wrap their heads around “what” and “why”, and let them run with the “how.” These folks love to solve problems, and I really only need to get involved to keep the customer focus on track.

Another key piece is that you have to be their advocate as much as their leader. Go to bat for them and their ideas. Defend them in budget meetings. Support their desire to experiment. The rewards are substantial.

Q. You’re created partnerships with MoMA, The Smithsonian, and The American Museum of Natural History that resulted in significant sales. What advice do you offer to people who want to establish relationships with these organizations?

A. The main thing we learned is that these are anointed, substantial brands with years of equity and reputation built up. Their vision and mission must come first. All we did was enable an e-commerce solution at a time when they needed it, and allowed them to leverage the existing Museum Company retail environment to their advantage. But even then, we had to work very hard to give these amazing institutions comfort that their visual and educational identity would remain intact and that our e-commerce processes were robust enough to provide excellent customer service.

Q. Message board marketing is hailed by many as being the most cost-effective investment that someone can make in the area of social media. Do you agree?

A. I do agree that they are a great way to get your name out there and to link yourself to areas of niche expertise and interest that coincide with your product or service. With the advent of Twitter and Facebook, a lot of folks are moving into more mainstream environments and so the noise is even greater now. They are also niche environments, so can never reach a mass audience with them without investing much time and energy. Spamming them does not work.

A. What message boards do you feel are the most important sites to approach, and what’s the best way to approach them?

The best ones to approach really depend on your business. The hard part is that there are many of them. Do substantial research and evaluation to determine the best ones to participate in. Once this is completed, join them as a participating member, not a marketer. No one wants spam in their threads; that approach violates all the premises of good social media behavior. If you are going to join a message board, be prepared to give more than you get.

Q. Do you feel that chatting has value for social media?

A. It has worked wonders for us, but it’s a one-on-one approach that is hard to leverage. I have done some pretty cool projects that got off the ground via a Facebook chat or Twitter Direct message thread. Some folks feel more comfortable opening up that way than on a phone call. It’s also a great customer service tool because it’s right here, right now. I cannot advocate it when you’re trying to reach a lot of folks at once.

Q. In your opinion, what are the most important social media networks?

Again, it depends on your company and what you are trying to do. Facebook is great for brands with personality, artists, event-driven or consumer-oriented businesses, or companies that are story-driven. The demographic is over 50% female, and the fastest growing age group is over 40. It’s also the largest network in the world and hard to ignore.

Twitter, while pretty new, is a great way to share short bursts of info driving to larger sources. It’s great for technology business, customer service, publishers, and consultants. It’s also growing so very fast across all market segments.

YouTube, of course, is massive as well and great for visually-oriented marketing. Creative use of video can go a long way towards softening the audience up for more direct approaches using other media. How-to manuals and customer service knowledge bases are also very valuable here.

Then there are all the more niche sites—Flickr, FriendFeed, Bebo, etc. Aside from the big three, which I think deserve at least a look for everyone, you have to research and target communities that match your approach and product or your social efforts won’t end up very social.

Q. What is the most time-effective way that you know to post to social media networks?

A. Sadly, there is no real solution here. There are a lot of tools for measuring and distributing content out there, but in the end it has to be someone’s job the identify and manage all the social presences that you choose. Once you do that, it’s not that difficult to set up a distribution process for all your different media presences. My good friend Gini Dietrich has some great blog posts on basic toolsets. Here is her blog.

Q. Do you use Twitter? If so, how do you use it, and what activities do you avoid?

A. If you are going to use it, be specific about the persona you adopt. At Rowdy, for example, each character on our show has his on Twitter account and uses it to further illuminate the audience as to his racing personality. But we also have more general Rowdy account that feeds new content links out to our followers every hour. My own personal Twitter account (@rustyspeidel) is all about social media and those that are experts in the field.

We avoid spamming anyone, ever. Twitter is such a tight format that it has to be personal to really work over time. The tweets have to add value or you’ll get nowhere. We also avoid Direct Messages with any type of marketing in them. It’s like getting a bad sales pitch from a buddy at a party. No fun.

Q. Do you use Facebook? If so, how do you use it, and what activities do you avoid?

A. Facebook is one of the best approximations of the real social fabric of society I can imagine. All the communications tools emulate, and have the same effect as, offline communication. As such, it has very specific niches that need to be respected.

Rowdy has a fan page that we use to spread our content around. I also have a personal Facebook account. Aside from my being an Admin on the Rowdy account, the two really are separate, and I believe they should stay that way. I do not like mixing my personal Facebook presence with work, as much for my own sanity as anything.

I avoid posting anything that might even remotely come back to bite me. If your grandmother would be ashamed of what you’re about to post, skip it. Facebook is a very personal medium, and fan pages exist specifically to give more public entities a voice. You must respect that.

Q. Would you share your opinion of how Rowdy.com grew from 1,500 members to over 20,000 members in a year-and-a-half?

A. Simple: our content is excellent NASCAR entertainment, we involve our fans in every aspect of the community and program, and we did a lot of great SEO and SEM work early on the process.

Q. You have done detailed traffic analysis. What procedures would you recommend using to analyze traffic?

A. You can analyze anything these days. Tools like Omniture can measure every click and every pixel on your site. Social measurement is different, however. Not only do you need to know what your audience is doing, but you also need to know its intentions, the tone of its participation, and the level of engagement and connection you are creating. This requires custom tools and thinking.

So…you have to identify the key performance indicators for your business, just like before, but add the social piece. What are they reading? Are they sharing it? Are they inviting friendships and connections? Are they commenting on other members’ content? Are they coming back regularly? Is the community tight, or large? Are they meeting offline or chatting during races?
Q. Why do you feel that you’ve reached 60,000 downloads on your NASCAR podcasts?

<p>A. Read the reviews on iTunes. They speak volumes.</p>

Q. In closing, are there any suggestions that you have for helping to establish a brand?

A. Here is a simple list we try and keep in mind all the time. Aside from having a great product, these are really important:

1. Listen first;
2. Measure the sentiment if your audience before acting;
3. Reach out to confirm or deny that sentiment;
4. Use real people with real voices to speak for you;
5. Commit to honesty and openness;
6. Commit to consistent communication;
7. Do what you promise!

If you do these things, you have as good a chance as anyone of growing and succeeding.

Tags: content distribution, metrics, NASCAR, Rowdy.com, Rusty Speidel, SEM, SEO, social engagement, social media, social networking, split testing, traffic analysis, Twitter